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®ljc (lolonijation anir 0ub5aitti:ut Cjistorjj of ]S[m^3tx$tQ, 



A DISCOURSE, 



PRONOUNCED BEFORE 



THE YOUNG MEN'S ASSOCIATION, 



OF 



NEW-BRlWmipK,- 

On the 1st of December, 1842. 



BY WILLIAM BEACH LAWRENCE. 

■'1 



SOMERVILLE, V. J. 

S. L. B. BALDWIN, PRINTER. 

1843. 



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C®[liE[E®[P®iMPiEiKl©l=. 

New-Brunswick, December 10, 1842. 
Dear Sir : 

At a recent meeting of the Lecture Committee of the Young Men's 
Association of our city, the following resolutions having been submitted 
were unanimously adopted, viz. 

'^Resolved, That the thanks of the Lecture Committee on behalf of 
the Young Men's Association of this city be, and hereby are, tendered 
to William B. Lawrence, Esq. for his very interesting and able lecture 
before it, on the evening of the 1st inst. Also, 

" Resolved, That the Secretary be authorized to communicate the 
above resolution to Mr. Lawrence, and to request the favor of a copy of 
his address for publication." 

The agreeable duty of communicating the above resolutions to you 
devolves upon me. In consonance with my instructions, I would beg to 
call your attention to the request contained in the last resolution, earnestly 
hoping that you will comply with it. 

Permit me to add, my dear sir, my own personal tribute of thanks to 
that of the Committee I represent. 

On behalf of L. C. of Y. M. A. 

Yours, very truly, 

CH. D. DESHLER. 

W. B. Lawrence, Esq. 



New- York, Dec 14, 1842. 
Dear Sir : 

I have received your letter of the 10th instant, requesting a copy of 
the Lecture, which I delivered before the " Young Men's Association 
of New-Brunswick." The remarks which were addressed to your So- 
ciety were very hastily prepared in consequence of the invitation, with 
which they had honored me, and were intended to point out a few of 
the interesting incidents of the history of New-Jersey, and to recall to 
the remembrance of the present generation some of the great and good 
men, whose character and services confer lustre on your State. If it is 
supposed that the publication of the Lecture can in any wise promote 
the laudable objects of your Association, it is entirely at your disposition. 
Please accept for 5^ourself my acknowledgements, for the flattering man- 
ner, in which you have communicated the resolutions of the Committee. 
1 am, dear sir, yours truly, 

W. B. LAWRENCE. 
Charles D. Deshler, Esq. 

Sec'y of L. C. of the Young Men's Association of Ncw-Brunswick. 

a2 



A DISCOURSE, kc. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen : . . 

I will not offer any apology for complying with the invitation, 
with which I have be?n honored by the '' Young Men's Associa- 
tion of New-Biunswick." To appear before a respectable assem- 
blao-eof a place, with which and its vicinity * my early impress- 
ions are more intimately connected than with any other spot in the 
universe could not, at any time, fail to afford me a gratification of 
no ordinary character. The occurrences of this evening carry me 
back through an interval of thirty years. The venerable seat of 
learning,! to which I am indebted for much valuable instruction 

"■"^e seat of the late Rev. Abraham Beach, D. D. the maternal 
grandfather of the writer, and to which allusion is made, is extensively 
known as " the farm." Dr. Beach, who died on the 11th of Septem- 
berl828, at the advanced age of eighty-eight yeaij, was a native ot 
Cheshire,' Connecticut. He was admitted to holy orders, in London in 
1767, and, at the same time, was appointed by /'die society forthe 
propaWtion of the gospel in foreign parts" their missionary, to officiate 
FnChSt Church, New-Brunswick. The estate referred to, and which 
was soon after his arrival in NewJersey, acquiredby intermarriage with 
a descendant of one of the first settlers, has ever since ^,^f}'''^f}l^^^^^^^ 
denceof his family, and at " the farm," after ofticiating foi twenty- 
nine years as the minister of Trinity Church New-York, to which p ace 
he was called in 1784, he passed in tranquil retirement the last fifteen 
years of his earthly career. His situation, during the war of the revo- 
lution was an extremely difficult one, living as he did, during the gieatei 
part of it, between the lines of the two contending armies, but, though 
in principle a loyalist and bound to the mother country by the ecclesias- 
tical connection, which existed between him and the authorities in En- 
2land, yet he ever scrupulously confined himself to the duties of hissa- 
cred office, never absenting himself a single Sunday f^^om his profession- 
al labors, and dispensing spiritual consolation alike to Whigs and Tories, 
to Americans and Englishmen. Indeed, at one time, he was the only 
Episcopal clei-yman officiating in New-Jersey. At the close of the 
war, he declined offers of the highest preferment in the British Provinces 
t The Collegiate department of Queen's College was closed from 1815 
10 1825, when it was reopened, under the name of Rutgei-s College, 
having been so called in honor of Col. Henry Rutgers of New-York^ 
a respectable member of the Dutch Church, of great hereditary wealth 
and who had contributed to its funds. Its first President under the new 
organization was the Rev. Philip Milledoler, D. D. who resigning his 
office in 1840, was succeeded by the Hon. Abraham B. Hasbrouck, 
L. L. D, now the eminent head of the institution. 



and wliich notwiilisfaiHling i(s tcinpoiarj depression during a por- 
tion of tlic intervening period, now constitutes, under its present 
happy au>^pices, the proudest nionument. of yoin- city, recalls tlie 
friendships of juvenile days, many of them loo soon interrupted 
by the varied duties wliich, in our business community, put in re- 
quisition the abilities of all, and no few of them long since severed 
by the unsparing iiand of death. In returning to scenes, amidst 
which so much of my life was passed I cannot feel altogether as a 
stranger, and I trust that the circumstances, to which I have allu- 
ded, will he deemed a suiTicient justification of the selection that I 
have made, and that it, will not be considered presumptuous in one 
thus situated to aslc your attention to a fev/ remarks, connected with 
the colonization and subsequent history of New Jersey. 

Jndeed, there is so much similarity in the motives, ^vhich indu- 
ced the set! lenient of the several colonies included in the old Thir- 
teen States, there was so uniformly a love of civil liberty, either 
brought over from the countries of their origin or engendered by the 
position of the emigrants, such a determination to follow^ tlie dictates 
of their own consciences in serviiig God, according to the almost 
boundless varieties of their religious creeds, that no Am.erican can 
study the history of his own particular State, without becoming 
more or less conversant v.'ith that of the Union, and as regards the 
citizens of New- York and New-Jersey, their annals; to no incon- 
siderable extent, are identical. Exp-osed not only to the same gen- 
eral political changes, which aflbcted the paramount sovereignty, 
but constituting under the first European claimants a single prov- 
ince, being included in the original grant of the seconil as such, 
and afterwards having, though under separate organizations, for a 
long period of their anterevolutionary existence, the same individu- 
als as Colonial Chief Magistrates, we may even, apart fiou^ that 
charter and safe-guard of our liberties, which has made all Amer* 
icansone people, deem ourselves in ever}^ sense fellow-citizens and 
fellow-countrymen. It is not my design, nor would the limits of a 
brief hour suflice to present to you even the most succinct "analysis 
of your political annals. My object in this rapid glance is merely 
by bringing to your recollection the very many incidents, which 
they alFord, worthy of the investigation of every son of the soil, to 
invite as the best means of cherishing patriotic sentiments and dif- 
fusing that knowledge, which all sliould possess, those among you, 
who may fcjllow me, to choose their themes from those ennobling 
topics, by which your history is amj)ly illustrated. 



7 

If we look to (hatcolouization, in which Holland, Sweden, Scot* 
hmd; Ireland and England boj-c a part, to say nothing of the ear- 
ly emigration from the descendants of I he Pilgrims, settled in the 
more Eastern colonies of ov.v own country, if we consider tlie va- 
rious distinctions of sects, which prevailed among the original em- 
igrants, if we examine the systems of government and civil })oli- 
ty, adopted by the Powers, which bore sway in portions of the ter- 
ritory, before its acquis^ition by England, and the different experi- 
ments adopted under the proprietary and royal authorities, if we 
call to mind the memorable occurrences of the revolutionary strug- 
gle within this State, or in which her distinguished sons bore a, 
part, no one can complain that I propose a barren subject. 

Not to enter on the questions connected with the ante Columbian 
discoveries of America, which though but recently discussed in the 
hterature of Southern Europe, have been transmitted to us through 
Icelandic manuscripts, and are even noticed in the Swedish narra- 
tives of the liistorians of a portion of your State, Campanius and 
Acrelius, to whom, for another purpose, I shall, by and bye, have 
occasion to refer — not to inquiie. whether New-Jersey formed a 
parr of that Vinland which, at the end of the tenth century, was 
visited by the norlhmen, to whose voyages the labors of the anti- 
quaiians of Copenhagen*" and the narrative of our accomplished 
countryman Wheatont have given so much interest, not to trace 
the parts of our coast explored, as early as the IGth cenlury, by 
Verazzano, a Florentine in the service of Francis 1st of France and 
who entered the bay of New- York, we may look to the voyan-e of 
Hendrick Hudson, who, in 1609, whilst in the emplov of the 
Dutch East India company, and in search of a north west passage 
to Ijulia^ sailed up the magnificent river, vvhich bears liis name, as 
well as entered the Delaware, your other boundary, as layino- the 
foundation of the first European colonization of New- Jersey. In- 
deed, a redoubt was thrown up on Jersey City point, lono- before 
any fortification was erected on Manhattan Island, and the settle- 
ments in your territory were nearly contenjporaneous v/ith those of 
the City of New- Amsterdam, v.'hich, when visited in 1614, by 
ArgalPs expedition, on its return from Port Royal, consisted but of 
a few huts. 

Nor were initiatory proceedings for forming settlements taken 

'^ Antiquitatcs AmoricancC Ante Colambiana3 &;c. Hafuiie, 1837. 
■j-Tlic history of the nortiimen by Henry Whcalon. 



8 

only on the Eastern borders of tlie State. The province of the 
New Netherlands, which was understood to include the whole coun- 
try from Cape Cod to the Delaware, was subjected to the West In- 
dia Company e?tal)lished in 1G21. In the same year fort Naseau 
was builL on Timber creek, near Camden, and the forts at New- 
York and Albany, the latter of which was called fort Orange, were 
erected. 

It was not long subsequent to this period that there were estab- 
lished in the New-Netherlands three colonies, two of them con- 
nected witli New-Jersey, by which the directors of the West India 
Company intended to perpetuate, through territorial possessions in 
the New World, the wealth, which successful commerce had ac- 
quired for them in the Old. The charter of liberties of 1629* 
granted by the West India Company to the Patroons, allows to 
any of its members, who should, within a limited period, plant 
colonies of fifty souls and comply with certain preliminary condi- 
tions, the privilege of extending their limits sixteen English miles 
along shore, that is on one side of a navigable river or eight miles 
on each side, and so far into the country, as the situation of the oc- 
cupants would permit. The colonists were free from charges, tax- 
es and duties imposed on others and the Patroons possessed the 
right of establishing courts of Justice; they had the power of ap- 
pointing all magistrates and officers and of providing religious in- 
struction, regulating the support of schoolmasters and most other 
matters, which are supposed to belong to the government of an in- 
dependant conmiunily, and, though we do not find the privilege in 
the charter of liberties, yet it is a matter of history, that the Pa- 
troons of Rensselairwick, (the first of whom availing himself of a 
provision of the charter authorizing the grantees to increase their 
territory according to the number of the original colonists, had ex- 
tended his possessions to a tract twenty-four miles by forty-eight,) 
built a fort to maintain iheir possessions. The virtues of the last 
individual, who enjoyed the hereditary estates devolving on him, 
as proprietor of this colony or manor, as it was regarded under the 
English government, and who, by the ties of family alliance, was 
connected with one of the distinguished statesmen of New- Jersey, 
to whom I shall in the course of these remarks have occasion to 
allude.f has created a respect for the name of Patroon, which has 

*A translation of this documciit will be found in <^ the New- York His- 
torical collections," New Scries, Vol. 1 p. 36U. 
t William raltcrson. 



CttUsecl k to be considered n title of honor long afier the exiinc- 
tion of the political rights on which it was based.* Pavonia, th« 
colony of tlie Director De Paw^, and to whom at one time was hke* 
wise granted Staten Island, embraced a portion of tlie Jersey 
shore, immediately opposite New- York. A plot of sixteen miles 
square, on the peninsula of Cape May, was bought of the Indians 
for the Director Goody n, who gave to it the name of Swanwendeel, 
but soon abandoned his project of colonization, and, at this day, 
no more vestiges are to be found of the Dutch Patroons, within 
the limits of New-Jersey than of Plovvden's palatinate of New-Al- 
bion, which seems, indeed, to have embraced the territory included 
in Goodyn's grant. For that enterprise a charter was obtained 
from Chailes 1st in 1634, a copy of which may be seen in Hazard's 
collections of State Papers,! conferring amongother powers on the 
Earl Palatine that of creating orders of Provincial noblHty, to 
whicfi those proposed by Mr. Locke in his Carolina constitutions, 
among us alone aflord any similitude. The colony was to be es- 
tablished betw^een Maryland and New-England. It is said that a 
settlement was made at Salem in this State, and it is stated in the 
same w^ork, in which I have found the charter, that the Earl Pala- 
tine of Albion resided on his grant for several years and acted as 
chief sovereign thereof. This effort, the existence of which has 
been recently questioned, to transplant the hereditary distinctions 
of European aristocarcy to the American soil> was not, however, 
more successful than that undertaken under the auspices of the 
great Pliilosopher. and the colony was soon broken up by the neigh- 
boring Dutch and Swedes. 

The settlements of the New-Nethei lands were made at a glori- 
ous period of Dutch History, at a time when a few insignificant 
provinces revolting from the greatest empire of the world, sustained 
by the miglity influence of commercial enterprise and an innate 
horror of foreign domination, were giving to Europe a foretaste of 
what, a little more than a century afterwards, was illustrated by 
our own story. There are few of those, who now honor me with 
their presence, in whose veins does not flow some portion of the 
blood of the countrymen and associates of Patriots, who disregard' 

*For a very interesting account of the colony of RensselEerwick, tha 
reader is referred to "a Discourse on the life and services of Stephen 
Van Rensselaer by D. D. Barnard." 

fSee Hazard's State Papers Vol. 1 p. 160. 

B 



10 

ing the immense distance, which separated the burghers of Am- 
sterdam from the King of Spain and the Indies, had yet the cour* 
age to defend, in ttie dykes and morasses of Holland, the exercise 
of their religion and the political rights of man against the most 
powerful potentate of Europe. 

It was, indeed, long before the peace of Munster had given a 
formal sanction to Dutch liberty, and while the independence of 
the States General was yet liable to be assailed by their former 
haughty masters, that the settlements in the New-Netherlands 
were formed. It is, however, due to historical (ruth to state that 
the motives of the Dutch in proposing^ these establishments were 
not precisely the same as those of the Plymouth pilgrims^ who were 
themselves escaping from oppression. The Dutch West India 
company were engaged in a commercial enterprise, and their plans 
had rather in view the benefit of those by whom the funds were 
advanced ihan the happiness of the governed. They were intent 
on promoting trade. Consideralions, however, connected with 
the success of their own enterprise, rendered necessary a discrimi- 
nation as to the character of the emigrants, the principle of which 
is fully maintained in the concessions to the Patroons, to which I 
have referred, and all the instructions of the Directors to their Gov- 
ernors evince the utmost solicitude as to commercial honor. They 
were charged to keep every contract inviolate, and the modern 
doctrine of repudiution would have found no favor, either with the 
council of nineteen or with their Representatives on this side of the 
Atlantic. We may learn from the accounts, which the English 
gave of New-York» at the lime of its surrender, the happy effects 
which had resulted from the honorable frugality and unspotted in- 
tegrity of the original settlers. *' All the early writers and travel- 
lers'' says a recent historian, (I quote from Mr. Grahame, a most 
liberal friend of America and whose valuable history of the colo- 
nization of the United States is deserving of general perusal,) 
*♦ unite in describing the Dutch colonial metropolis as a handsome, 
well built town ; and Jossylin declares that the meanest house in 
it was worth one hundred pounds sterling. '' *' Indeed," continues 
Mr. Grahame, "the various provisions that were introduced into 
the articles of surrender to guard the comforts of the inhabitants 
from invasion, attest the orderly and plentiful estate, which these 
colonists had attained, as well as explain the cause of their unwar- 
like sj)irit. Of the colonists, who had latterly resorted to the prov- 



11 

ince, some were persons, who had enjoyed considerable affluence 
and respectability in Holland, and who imported with them and 
displayed in their houses costly services of family plate and well 
selected productions of the Dutch school of painting."* 

But in our commendations of what is valuable in Dutch char- 
acter and enterprise, we must not forget that the notions of liberty, 
which prevailed, even in the mother country, w€re very different 
from those which, under the blessed influence of magna charta 
and the common law, accommodated to our circumstances and 
position, constitute the boast and glory of our present institutions. 
Liberty in Holland was confined either to the territorial lords or 
to the municipal burghers. The peasant, the boor had no partici* 
pation in the elective franchise, no political rights to defend. There 
was no trial by jury, that distinguishing characteristic of English 
jurispiudence. Even the officers of the municipalities constituted 
close corporations, or were nominated by the Stadiholders and by 
the municipalities were the provincial delegates chosen and by them 
the delegates to the States General. Nor were the colonies subjected, 
except by a remote tie, to the political sovereignty of the mother 
country, but they were the property of a corporation, which, how- 
ever extensive its powers, could be regarded only as a trading com- 
pany. From such a source and surrounded by such associations, 
we "would, in vain, look for any provision as to colonial representa- 
tion. The grants to the Patroons contemplated the establishment 
of lordships similar to those of Holland, while the island of Manhat- 
tan was retained by the company and was the residence of the 
Governor General. The Sheriff of the City of New-Amsterdam 
was appointed by the Governor and the Schapen and Burgomas- 
ters perpetuated themselves. 

The Agriculturists — the farmers of the New-Netherlands were, 
however, too near the English colonists to submit always to the 
degradations, to which the institutions of the Fatherland subject- 
ed them. We find, as early as 1653, that a voluntary convention 
was held of two delegates from each village, in which Baxter, an 
emigrant from New-Engiand, bore a prominent part, and which 
resulted in a remonstrance unanimously adopted, that breathed the 
spirit rather of English than of Dutch liberty. To use the elegant 
version of Bancroft, "The States General of the United Provin- 
ces" said they " are our liege lords, we submit to the laws of the 



*Grahame's history of the United States, Vol. 1 p. 225. 



13 

Uniied Province? and our riglitsand privileges ought to be in har- 
mony with those of the Failierhmd, for we are members of the 
State and not a subjugated people ; we, who have transformed the 
wilderness into fruitful farms, demand that no laws shall be enact- 
ed but with the consent of the people, that none shall be appointed 
to oOice but with the approbation of the people, that ©bscure and 
obsolete laws shall never be revived."* 

The result, however, was what might have been anticipated, 
Stuyvesant, high minded and estimable as the old Governor wat 
in every relation of life, had not been educated in a school to toler- 
ate language such as this. Though the divine right of kings had 
been repudiated, he could not conceive that power should emanate 
from the great body of the people. The assembly was dispersed 
imder tln*eats of exemplary punishment, the Governor declaring 
that " we derive our authority from God and the West India Com- 
pany, not from the pleasure of a few ignorant subjects.'* It is a 
remark not unfrequently made and to the truth of which the his- 
tory of the New-Netherlands affords no exception, that revolutions 
do not go backwards. When menaced by the English in 16G3, 
the necessities of his government induced Stuyvesant to call an 
assembly and to appeal, as the only means of protection, to those 
boors, wliom he had, a few years before, treated with so much in- 
dignity. It was, however, too late. The Colonists would not fight 
to perpetuate the sway of the West India Company nor would the 
company spend money for the Colony ; and, thus the aristocratic 
hberties of Holland yielded to the anticipation of equal rights. 

Not, however, to dispose so rapidly of our Dutch ancestors — the 
claims of the New-Netherlands enibraced the Connecticut river, 
and as early as 1633, Fort Good Hope was built within the bounds 
of the present city of Hartford, but as it does not fi\ll within the 
territorial limits, to which 1 propose confining myself, I shall not 
attempt a sketc!) of the various diplomatic negotiations, in which 
the Dutch Governors, who, not without reason complained that 
the hospitality, which had been accorded to the Pilgrims, during 
their temporary abode in Holland, had been ill requited by their 
descendants of New-England were engaged with the wily Yankees? 
nor shall I speak of those martial achievements of our ancestors, 
on which one of our most eminent and accomplished countrymen 
has contrived to cast such a shade of ridicule. Indeed, while doing 



•Bancroft'! history of the United States, Vol. 2 p. 306 



n 



a 



justice to the happy irony by which ihe pagrs of the Knickerbocker 
are distinguished, no one who studies the early annals of liis 
country can fail to unite with an historian, whom 1 have already 
introduced to your acquaintance, in wishing " that Washington 
Irving had put a little more or a little less truth in it, and that his 
talent for humor and sarcasm had found another subject than ihe 
dangers, hardships and virtues of the ancestors of his national 
family.'*^ 

It has been remarked by the historians of New- Jersey that the 
earlv setllement of tliis province was more exempt from ihe disas- 
ters attendant on border wars and Indian fights than that of any 
of the other old Slates of the confederacy. Tiiat ihe freedom from 
such difficulties, under the colonial regime of the English, was 
fully made up by the niilitary occupation of the country, during the 
revolution, we shall hereafter see, and though the government of 
ihe New-Netherlands was very fortunate in its relations with *' ihe 
five nations," of which full evidence was afforded during the short 
restoration of its authority, after the first surrender to the English, 
yet there were connected with Indian affairs difficulties, while the 
Dutch bore sway, that prove that the pacific condition of things 
referred to, even as applicable to liiat period, was not \\ithout its 
exceptions. In 1630, DeVries was associated with De Laetf Van 
Rensselaer and other Patroons for the purpose of planting colonies 
in the New-Nelherlands. A settlement of thirty persons was made 
near Lewistown on the Delaware, all of whom, on the return of 
their leaders, two years afterwards, were found to have been killed 
by the Indians, and by this act of the savages was terminated the 
first colony, which the Patroons attempted to establish in America, 
under the liberal charter, to which reference has been made. 

This massacre, though occurring within the New-Netherlands, 
was in tlie immediate neighborhood but without ihe present bounds 
of New^- Jersey. The picture of the times would be incomplete, 
did we not give an illustration, that shows that savage cruelty was 
not confined to the Indians. The w\ar, which arose in 1643, and 

*Grahame's United States, Vol. 2 p. 510. 

•|-De Laet was the author of the Neio World, a work which as well 
as the voyages of De Vries, the histories of Lambrechsten and Vander- 
donck will be found in the collections of the New- York Historical So- 
ciety, the last volume of which, was published in 1841 under the super- 
intendence of George Folsom, Esq. to whom the student of American 
history h, on more than one account, under great obligations. 



14 

which was attended witli such destruciive consequences to the scat- 
tered setilements of tlie emigrants, would appear, according to De 
Vries, to have commenced in an unprovoked aggression, on the part 
of Governor Kieft, who deemed the murder of a few savages at 
Pavonia, which wa.^3 as has been remarked, situated in New- Jersey, 
o()posile New- York, a feat worthy of the ancient heroes of Rome. 
De Vries, who was then at New-Amsterdam, thus describes the 
massacre. "It was in the night between the 25th and 26th of 
Februaiy 1013, that they executed these fine deeds. 1 remained 
tliat night at the Governor's and at nv.dniglit, I heard loud shriek?. 
I went out (o the parapet of the fort and looked towards Pavonia. 
I saw nothing but the dash of guns and heard nothing more of 
the yells and clamour of the Indians, who were butchered during 
their sleep — about day the soldiers returned again to the fort, having 
murdered eighty Indians. And this was the feat worthy of the 
heroes of old Rome to massacre a pack of Indians in their sleep, 
to take the children from the breast of their mothers and to butcher 
them in the presence of their parents and throw their mangled 
limbs into the fire or water ! Other sucklings had been fastened to 
little boards and in this position they were cut to pieces ! Some 
were thrown into the river, and when their parents rushed in to save 
them, the soldiers prevented their landing, and let parents and 
children drown ! Children of five or six years old were murdered, 
and some decrepid and aged men cut to pieces, those, who had 
escaped these horrors and found shelter in bushes and reeds, making 
their appearance in the morning to beg some food or warm them- 
selves, were killed in cold blood or thrown into the fire or water. — 
Some came running to us in the country having their hands cut 
off. Some had their arms and legs cut olf — some who had their legs 
cut oflf were supporting their entrails with their arms, others were 
mangled in other horrid ways, in parts too shocking to be concei • 
veJ."* I need not add that the result was disastrous to all the pop- 
ulation without the walls, the revenge on the part of the Indians, 
was deep and far felt, and, for two whole years, the tomahawk was 
in active operation. From the shores of New- Jersey to the borders 
of Connecticut not a settlement was safe and peace ultimately was 
only eflfected by the instrumentality of Underhill, an emigrant from 
New England. 

The establishments of the Dutch before the surrender wereconfi- 



*New'-York Historical Collections, N. S. Vol, 1 p. 268. 



15 

ned to the vicinity of the North and South rivers, as the Hudson 
and Delaware were termed. Numerous settlements, however, ex- 
isted on the shores opposite to New- Amsterdam, while between that 
City and fort Casimir, now Newcastle, which was iheir chief seat 
on the Deiaware,more than one communication traversing the entire 
State of New- Jersey was maintained. These roads crossed the 
Raritan at this place, where there was a ferry afterwards called 
Inians ; but New-Brunswick, though its colonization was essen- 
tially of Dutch origin, was founded long subsequent to the fall of 
the New-Netherlands, many of its early inhabitants having come 
from Long Island, while it received in 1730 so large an accession 
from Albany that the emigration from that source has permanently 
affixed, in despite of a different legal appellation, to the principal 
Street, the name of their former residence. At Burlington, where 
the capital of West Jersey was afterwards established, a few Dutch 
families were collected at an early day ; while the migratory habits 
of the Eastern settlers had even before the end of the I7th century, 
already induced them to regard the territory of New-England as 
too circumscribed for their abode, and brought emigrants to dispute 
with the Swedes and Dutch the possession of the banks of the 
Delaware. But, the most important occurrence in the colonial his- 
tory of the New-Netherlands was the subjugation to their sway by 
Governor Stuyvesant, in 1655, of the Swedes, whose settlement 
in this country will require, after we have brought the Dutch mat- 
ters to a close, even in the cursory view which we are taking, a 
special notice. 

England had always, during the fifty years that the government 
of the New-Netherlands was in existence, asserted claims to that 
territory, and it was said that the only right, which the Dutch 
possessed arose from permission, accorded to them by the former 
power, to maintain a place of refreshment at the island of Man- 
hattan for vessels proceeding to the Brazils. The existence of any 
arrangement of this kind is altogether denied by the best author- 
ities ; while we cannot attach, as against the voyage of the Half 
Moon*, and the actual occupation of the country, more importance 
to the grant, which James the 1st is said to have made of these 
territories to the Earl of Stirling, than we accord to the papal bulls. 
However, there was in the pretension sufficient plausibility to jus- 
tify an act, which supreme power was capable of enforcing, 'i he 



^ Hudson's Ship. 



10 

Nnw-En^huulers had long- ivgartled wiili liltle favof the proximity 
of I he Dutch, while they were assibted in their projecls hy the 
views of (he iidiubitanis iheinselves, to which we have adverted. 
The anoiDalous corjdiiion of the New Netherlands, the property of 
the West India Oonipany, without being an appendage tothe polit- 
ical au'.liority of the nioiher country, enabled England to acconi- 
phsh tlie conque&'t of these [)rovinces without even violating there- 
Icitions between her and the States General, and though in 1673, 
owing to the naval triumphs of Holland and the pusillanimity of 
the English officer in command at New-York, who, reversing the 
course of Siuyvesant and his people, refused to allow the City to 
m;il<e a defence, there Was a temporary restoration, throughout the 
Province, of tlie Dutch authority ; yet for all practiced purposes, 
we may look upon the surrender of New-Amsterdam in 1764, as 
closing the political domination in America of the West India 
Company of the Netherlands. 

Before, however, we treat of events incident to the surrender to 
England, we must recur, for a few minutes, to those settlements 
from Sweden which gave so much additional value to the Hritisli 
acquisitions. Though the project of colonization originated in the 
reign of Gustavus Adolphus and received the sanction of that illus- 
trious defender of the Protestant faiih, before he was, by tlie battle 
of Lutzen, prematurely lost to the world, yet it was not till 1633, 
during the minority of ids eccentric daughter, and wliile Oxestiern 
dirccied the destinies of Sweden, that any colonization actually 
commenced. Christina, w hich has been corrupted into Christiana, 
was the place of the first settlement, while |)urchases were made 
on both sides of the river from Cape Henlopen, as far up as Tren- 
ton. Minuits, who had been Governor of the New Netherlands 
and had left the emj)loy of tlie Dutch West India Company, was 
the chief of the enterpris(! ; but a more direct countenance was, 
soon after, given to the colony by the appointment of Col. Prinz, 
an oQicer in the Royal service, to be governor of New Sweden, 
who established his residence at Tinicum, an island in the Dela- 
ware, below Philadeli)hia. According to ihe historian of this 
colony, those of our fellow-citizens, who can trace their descent 
from Scandinavian ancestors, have no leason to blush for their 
ori'MU, for though three classes of people emigrated to America, 
viz. The Company's servants- -the freemen, whose object was the 
betterin" of their fortunes— aud the malefactors, w ho went to per- 
form the duties of sla\c?, Camj>arnius add^, that "the Europeans 



17 

refused to receive these last, declaring that there was no scarcity of 
good and lionest people to settle the country^ and that most of these 
unfortunate beings, so far from being incorporated with the emi- 
grants, perished on tlieir way back,"* To the conquest of this little 
Colony, before the New Netherlands themselves submitted to 
England, we have already alluded. Traces of Swedish dominion 
in the names of places and the appellations of famihes are still to 
be found, as well in this State, as in Delaware and Pennsylvania, 
and thougl], after a very brief term, from their first emigration, all 
political dependence on the mother country ceased, a most interest- 
ing connection continued to be kept up with her, till a very recent 
period. 

Both of the historians, to whom I have referred, came to this 
country, at the royal expense and with the promise of further 
recompense, to administer spiritual consolation and religious instruc- 
tion to those of their brethren, who had long ceased, by the force of 
political events, to owe allegiance to the king of Sweden, and it 
was to the same munificence that we are indebted for the settlement 
among us of the translator of Acrelius, who arrived here, so late 
as 1771, as the minister at Swedesborough in this State, and who, 
instead of returning to Stockholm to claim his reward from the 
king, finished a clerical career of forty-five years as the Pastor of 
the Svvedish Church in Philadelphia f 

It is also to be noticed, while on ecclesiastical topics, that as in 
the case of the Swedes, so likewise with regard to the Dutch, 
political revolutions did not affect the relations between the churches 
of the mother country and the colonies, but for a long period after 
the surrender to the English our Dutch congregations continued 
subject to the Clussis of Amsterdam, and many of the most distin- 
guished oinameuts of the church, during the last century, received 
their education in the Universities of the United Provinces. It may 
likewise be added that the intelligent agent, i whom the State of New. 
York has employed to procure copies from abroad of the documents, 
connected with her colonial annals,has also been fortunate in obtain- 
ing papers to illustrate the early history of the Dutch Church in 
America. 

The grant of New- York and New- Jersey to the Duke of York^ 
who had indeed some pretensions derived from the purchase of 

* Du ponceaus' Translation of Campanius in the Pennsylvania Hist. 
Coll. Vol. 3, p. 73. 

fThe Rev. Dr. Collin. J J. R. Brodhead, Esq. 



18 

Loril Stirling's rights, was almost simultaneous with its acqtiisitlari 
by Great Britain, and was the same year followed by the con- 
veyance of New-Jersey to Sir George Carteret and Lord Berkeley. 
And though this royal personage does not seem to have acted 
with better faith, on this than on other occasions, and the numerous 
private grants made by his governar Nicolis, at New- York, led to 
much litigation in a subsequent period of the history of the colony, 
yet after the departure of the Dutch in '73, the title of Carieret 
and Berkele}^ was confirmed, as well as respects the political as the 
territorial riglUs. It was the acts of Nicolis, which gave rise 
to the controversy respecting what was called the Elizabeth-Town 
grant, involving 400,000 acres of land, and which led to the filing 
in 1745 of that bill in Chancery, from which so much of the early 
history of the Slate may be learned.* Settlements on the Raritan 
and from Bergen to Shrewsbury were made by Eastern people 
from Long Island, who had come hither during the Dutch regime. 
After the surrender, Nevv England, that nursery of nations, at once 
availed herself of the new territory and Newark was soon obtained 
and settled by emigrants from that region. 

In the first days of colonial history, the same view which, in 
support of independence, was afterwards maintained by the 
Americans, that the foreign possessions depended on the Crown 
alone, and were not subject to the intervention of Parliament, was 
recognised as a universal principle. Hence the grant to the Duke 
of York and his subsequent transfer of New-Jersey, ns well as the 
establishment of other proprietary governments in Pennsylvania, 
Maryland and the Carolinas. These proprietary rights were not 
confined to the mere ownership of the soil, or the exclusive privi- 
lege of extinguishing the Indian tiile, but went even far beyond 
the grants made by the West India Company to the Dutch Patroons. 
The colonies of the latter were restricted to a few square miles, and 
were subjected to the superior authority of the Governor of the 
New-Netherlands, while the proprietary grants embraced provinces^ 
large enough to constitute independent emj)ires, and their owners 
knew, in their provincial governments, no yuperior authority save 
that of the paramount Sovereign. Nor were these rights, like the 
English peerage or the kingly power transferable only by descent 



*Bill in tlie Chancery of New- Jersey, at the suit of Jolin, Earl of 
Stair, and the Pro[)rictars of the Eastern Division of New-Jersey, 
against Benjamin Bond and some other persons of Elizabcthtown dis- 
tinguished by the name of the Clinker Lot Right men, filed in 1745. 



19 

and confjiied to the families of the original grantees, but the juris- 
diction, equally with the soil, was a matter of traffic and was sold 
as merchandize or transferred by the operations of bankruptcy and 
more than one instance of such changes of proprietorship is to be 
found in the aunals of New- Jersey, before the surrender of the 
political powers of the proprietaries of East and West New-Jersey 
to the Crown, in 1702. 

Notwithstanding, however, the disadvantages, which in theory 
would seem to attend governments regulated upon the principles of 
trading companies, the self interest of those who looked to the co- 
lonization, as a means of pecuniary profit, accomplished more for 
the establishment of free principles than ever could have been ob- 
tained from the voluntary grant of an independent monarch. — 
The proprietaries in the American colonies looked for emigrants to 
the people of England, on whose minds the excitements attendant 
upon the civil wars and the establishment of a Republic were still 
vivid, and they had to compete with one another and with the ad- 
vantages, which the chartered colonies, already independent in fact, 
held out to settlers. Popular rights were thus wrested by consider- 
ations of avarice from the most bigoted royalists. It would have 
been in vain, for Sir George Carteret and the representatives of Lord 
Berkeley's interests, when they partitioned New- Jersey between 
them, to have invited Englishmen to settle here, had they refused 
them the privilege of selecting their own spiritual instructors, had 
they denied them the rights of determining their own taxation, 
through colonial representation. We accordingly find that while 
New- York was till 16S3 without any colonial assembly, the inhab- 
itants being ruled by the Duke's governors and councils, who 
from time to time, made regulations; which were esteemed as laws, 
the legislature of East Jersey was convened under the proprietary 
governor, Philip Carteret, as early as 166S, holding its sessions at 
Elizabethtown, Woodbridge, Middletown and Piscataway or Pis- 
cataqua, as it was then called, some of which provincial capitals, 
from their present aspect, would seem, indeed, not to have justified 
the ambitious anticipations of their founders. 

The concessions, as they are styled, of the Proprietaries of both 
the Jerseys, though the term *' concessions" may sound somewhat 
discordant to republican ears, granted to the Colonists the most 
ample privileges and in one respect, as has been frequently remarked, 
went far beyond the constitution adopted by the provincial congress 
of 1776. While that instrument confines political privileges to 



20 

protestants, the concessions made no religious distincdons whatever. 
There is a provision against the imposition of any taxes, assess- 
ments or duties, without the authority or consent of the general 
assembly, and the exercise of religion, according to every one's 
conscience and judgement, is secured in the fullest manner. 

At an early day, in the annals of the proprietary government of 
both Colonies, we are introduced to the great leaders of a sect, 
whose enthusiasm then attracted no little attention in the mother 
country, but the quiet deportment of whose followers, as we have 
ever known them, would induce the belief that its distinctive ap- 
pellation, like Incus a non lucendo, was derived from the absence of 
the quality implied by it. This is not the occasion to treat of the 
dogmas of theology or even to allude to that " inner light, which 
the Quaker regards not only as the revelation of truth but the 
guide of life and the oracle of duty." Intellectual freedom, su- 
premacy of mind, universal enfranchisement constitute Quakerism, 
so far as regards civil society. But, however, George Fox might 
have relied on natural impulses, unaided liy what the world calls 
learning, it could not have been so with Robert Barclay and Wil- 
liam Penn. They were both skilled in all the knowledge of their 
age, had been familiar wil-h the most refined Society of England 
and the continent, while the son of Admiral Penn, notwithstanding 
the diversity of their religious tenets, enjoyed the personal intimacy 
of James the second. Penn, though identified with the origin of an- 
other State of our confederacy, has greater claims than an}^ other 
individual to be remembered in connection with the Province of 
New-Jersey. 

Robert Barclay, who has done more than any other writer of his 
persuasion to render Quakerism a methodical and rational system, 
though on his conversion, acting under one of those irresistible 
impulses, by which its votaries were then influenced, he is said to 
have traversed the streets of Aberdeen in sackcloth and ashes*, 
was the first governor of East Jersey. He never visited An)erica, 
but from 16S3 till his death in 1G90, acted by a deputy. He was 
very instrumental in inducing the emigration of his countrymen 
the Scotch, as well those of other sects as the Quakers, and to con- 
ciliate other interests, there were introduced among the proprietaries, 
who made the purchase from the representatives of Carteret, sev- 
eral, whose rehgious opinions were utterly at variance with Barclay's. 

^Biographic Univcrscllc, Tome, 3, p. 360. 



21 

Of lliis number was llie Earl of Perth whose nj\me was given to 
the seat of government, and which was not unreasonably, from its 
location, intended for a great commercial emporium. 'I'here was 
also a large infusion of New Er)g!anders into the population of 
East Jersey, and a subsequent immigration of Dutch during the 
convulsions, that preceded the assassination of Dewitt and the tri- 
umph of the Prince of Orai^ge. 

Lord Berkeley had sold his interest to two (Quakers, as early as 
1673, by one of whom a settlement was commenced on the Dela- 
ware, and in 1677 a large immigration of tlie people of that sect 
took place under the proprietaries of West Jersey, among whom 
Penn was conspicuous. In 1631 the first assembly was held.— 
The commencement of the governnient was signalized by a deter- 
mined resistance to the exac:ions of Andross, who was then govern- 
or for the Duke, at New- York, and of whom it was said that " he 
knew no will but that of his master, and that Kirk and JefTries 
were not filter instruments to execute the despotic projects of James 
the second." To preserve (he population from the contaminations of 
vice, every emigrant was obHged to prove that his change of resi- 
dence was " not the eflfect of crime nor an act of fraud, but that he 
was reputed a person of blameless and sober life." 

Among the names at this epoch deserving of commemoration in 
the annals of West Jersey is that of Thomas Jennings. He came 
to America in 1679 as (he deputy of the Proprietary Byllinge, and 
was soon after made Governor. On the surrender of the proprie- 
tary rights of jurisdiction, he remained in the province and became 
the first Speaker of the Assembly of New- Jersey and in a public 
career, that continued till his death in 1708, was distinguished as 
the unbending advocate of popular rights against the exactions of 
Corn bury.* 

The variousactsof James the second, while Duke of York,d id not 
protect the proprietaries of New- Jersey from an usurpation of their 
rights, when he became king. He caused writs of Q^no warranto 
lo be issued against East and West Jersey, as well as against the 
charters of the Eastern Colonies and proposed to unite all New- 
England, New- York and New-Jersey under the government of 
that Andross, of whom we have spoken — that arbitrary and time 
serving ruler, who, after having fulfilled the views of the Catholic 
James, towards the Protestants while he was in power, on the 

*Smitli's History of New-Jersey, p. 352. 



22 

change of government stood rendy to act as the agent of William 
in an usurpation, equally unjust, against the rights of iheCalholicj 
but tolerant proprietary of Maryland. These measures against 
the Jerseys, were of course arrested by the English revolution of 
1683, which however was in its consequences far from benefiting 
the colonies. It secured the lights of the people at home ; but, at 
the same time, established the parliamentary ascendancy over those 
possessions, which, as has been observed, it had till then been ad- 
mitted, were subject to the king alone. 

The surrender of the governn^ent to the crown in 1702, though 
termed a voluntary act^ seems to have had in view the avoiding of 
an expensive litigation. By ilie new system the proprietaries, 
whose organization continues to this da}', vvere confirmed in their 
rights to their estates and quit rents, and were alone permitted to 
make purchases from the Indians, but their political authority was 
at an end. Tliere was a confirmation of the rights of conscience, 
though they were not, as before, extended to the Papists. Quakers 
were rendered eligible to all offices, and conformably to the spirit 
of that age, the Governor was instructed to give special countenance 
to the Royal African Company in the sale of their negroes. 

Though the two divisions of New -Jersey were thus consolidated 
with a single legislature, the eflect of the arrangement, by placing 
the govermiient of the colony under the same individual as that of 
New-York, was to subject the lesser province to all the inconveni- 
ences attendant on a connection with a greater State. New-Yoric 
was the Governor's residence and there also most of the other offi- 
cers of State resided. Lord Cornbury, who succeeding the Earl 
of Bellamont at New-Yoik, was under this arrangement the first 
Governor of New- Jersey, though a near connexion of Q,ueea 
Anne, being the grandson of that illustrious Earl of Clarendon 
whose daughter married James the second, was extremely needy and 
came to this country for the purpose of exacting from his situation 
as much tnoney as possible. Never, it is said, was a governor so 
detested as Cornbury, and the Queen was obliged to yield to the 
remonstrances of her subjects of both provinces and remove him 
from his office. Among other difficulties attendant on his admin- 
istration no little dissatisfaction was created by the attempt to give 
extraordinary favor to the Episcopal church with a view to render- 
ing it, as in England, the establishment, contrary to the wishes of 
the great body of the People. Indeed, though Churches were built 
at Perth Amboy in 16S5, at Elizabeth Town in the time of Carteret 



23 

and at several other places oefore the revolutionary war, it is only 
within our own recoiled ion that the Church of Enoland in this 
State obtained its complete organization by the consecration to the 
Eiscopate of a reverend clergy man, long the respected minister of 
this parish.* 

It was in 173S that the colony succeeded in obtaining the ap- 
pointment of a separate governor in the person of Lewis Morris, 
who had been Chief Justice both in New- York and New-Jerse}^, 
and a prominent member of the Councils of those Colonies, who 
had more than once temporarily administered the government du- 
ring a vacancy, and who, as a member of assembly in Cornbury's 
time, had baen associated wiih Jennings in the support of popular 
rights. He was tlie son of the first patentee of Morrisania, ami 
was in all respects a very remarkable individual, and would alone 
have rendered memorable the naine of Morris,f but the almost he- 
reditary influence, for upwards of a century, of his family in the 
two States, with which he had been connected, and the brilliant 
talents and revolutionary services of one of his descendants, in the 
second degree, have added to it far greater eclat. Though much 
gratitude was, at first, evinced towards Governor Morris for achie- 
ving, as it were, the freedom of the Province from the thraldom of 
New-York, his career was another illustration of the instability of 
popular favor. After ihe death of Morris in 1746, Belsher and 
Bernard occupied the chair of State, which without referring more 
particularly to the series of Governors, was, at the breaking out of 
the revolution, filled by Franklin, who, though possessed of the 
talents and acquirements adequate to his position, is particularly 

*The Right Reverend John Crocs, D. D. Rector of Christ Church, 
Nevv-Brunswick, was consecrated Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church in New- Jersey, on 19th Nov. 1815, and was, on his death, in 
1832, succeeded by the Right Rev'd George VV. Doane, D. D. L. L. D, 
the present Diocesan. 

■j-Robert Hunter Morris, a son of Governor Morris, was Chief Justice 
of New-Jersey, subsequently Deputy Governor of Pennsylvania, and 
his other son Lewis, was Speaker of the Assembly of New-York.—. 
Lewis Morris, one of Governor Morris's grandsons was a signer of the 
Declaration of Independence — another, Richard, was Chief Justice of 
New- York — while their brother Gouverneur, to whom special allusion 
is made in the text, was a member of the Continental Congress from 
New- York, of the Convention that formed the Constitution of the United 
States from Pennsylvania, a Minister Plenipotentiary abroad and a Sena- 
tor of the United States from New-York. See Spark's Life of Gou- 
verneur Morris. 



24 

di-iingiiislied by tlic difTerence between his political course and that 
of his illustrious father. 

In looking through the colonial annals, we find that New- Jersey, 
even as a province, was not deaf to what she deemed patriotic ap- 
peals. Slie voted in 1745 £-3000 to the Louisburg expedition, an 
enterprise which, perhaps as much as any other event, taught the 
Americans, and particularly the people of New-England, to rely 
on I hat skill and courage, which, thirty years afterwards, were to be 
atienJed with sucli prodigious results. As early as 1746, 600 men 
were sent by the colony to Canada under Col. Schuyler and that 
this expedition eventuated in nothing, was owing to the neglect of 
the mother country to perform her part of the undertaking. Noir 
was New-Jersey inactive, during the war of 1756. In 175S-9 and 
60, she voluntarily kept up one thousand men. Nor is it only with 
respect to her contributions to the military service of what was then 
deemed the common country, that information is to be gleaned from 
her colonial history. The political student will find no little dis- 
cussion in her annals on matters cognate to the debates of the 
present day. Arguments in abundance are to be met with on the 
relative advantages of paper money and an exclusive specie circu- 
lation, as induced b}' the several acts passed for the issuing of bills 
of crctlit, and which were generally vetoed by the Government at 
home to the no small disaj)pointment of the Province. 

The boundaries, a!sO; are a prolific subject, some of the ques- 
tions relatin"" to which. outliviniT all the chanofes in the forms of 
government, came down to our own liuie. Fortunately, however, 
the treaty of limits between New- York and New- Jersey, concluded 
in lb34, based, like that recently entered into on a similar subject 
between England and the United States, on principles of mutual 
concession and reciprocal advantage, has already buried in oblivion 
the many cases of confiicting jurisdiction, which had agitated the 
public mind, and led to acts of hostile legislation. 

When the Stamp act was received in this country, the spirit 
which prevailed elsewhere, existed in no less force in New-Jersey. 
The first proceedings of the Assembly, in answer to the overtures 
of Massachusetts, were indeed equivocal, but at an extra session, 
convened for the purpose, delegates were appointed to the Congress 
at New-York of J 766, and the Assembly subsequently adopted the 
warmest measures advocated in that body. Tiiis was followed up 
by sanctioning the Virginia resolutions of '69 and all the other 
measures, preliminary to the great event of *76, The provincial 



25 

Congress, tliat chose tlie members of ilie continental Congress of 
I774j met at New-Brunswick, and among liiose selected, thougb 
he had been, only for a year or two, a resident of New- Jersey, we 
fmd the name of William Livingston, a member of a family not 
ofily distinguished in the civil histoiy of New-York, of this Stale, 
and of the Union,* but associated in the recollection of all, who 
hear me, with the venerable aspect and dignified form of one 
equally jllustrious as the Patriarch of the religious communit}^, to 
which he was attached. f Of the five delegates first named to the 
continental congress, it is said by the biogra|)her of Gov. Livingston 
that only two remained throughout the contest faithful and steady 
(0 the cause. And when we learn that even these doubted the ex- 
pediency of the final separation from ihe mother country, we may 



**■ Without enumerating others of an earlier date, Philip Livingston, 
the brother of Gov. Livingston was a signer of the Declaration of In- 
dependence from Nevv'- York, and Brockb.olst Livingston, who succeeded 
Judge Patterson as a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
was a son of the Governor. Of another branch of the family, Robert 
R. Livingston was distinguished in revolutionary history as a member 
of Congress, and Secretary for fojeign affairs, and Chancellor of New- 
York ; while Edward Livingston, the youngest brother of the Chancel- 
lor, is known as an pminent jurist, a member of both houses of Congress 
and a diplomatist of later days. 

fThe Rev'd John H. Livingston, D. D. received his theological in- 
struction in the University of Utrecht, and after being invested by the 
Classis of Amsterdam in 1770, with the ministerial office, and having 
obtained the degree of Doctor of Divinity from his University, he re- 
turned, declining a call from one of the churches at Amsterdam, through 
England, to his native country. Pie immediately, on his arrival, entered 
on the duties to which he had been invited during his absence, as one of 
the Ministers of the Reformed Dutch Church of New- York. He soon 
rose to the highest eminence in the Church, being in 1771 the President 
of a convention of the Ministers and Elders of the two Provinces of 
New-York and New-Jersc}'- and he was offered the Presidency of 
Queen's College, New-Brunswick, then just incorporated, an ofiice, which 
was subsequently conferred on the Rev'd Jacob R. Hardenbergh, D. D. 
who filled it from 1786 to 1790. He was also recommended by the 
Theological faculty of Utrecht in 1774 as Professor of Theology in the 
new College. This arrangement was defeated by the war, but in 1785, 
he accepted the office of Professor of Theology, to which he was appointed 
by the general Synod. He removed to New. Brunswick in October 1810, 
the academical department of Queen's College having been resuscitated 
in 1807, as President of the College as well as Professor of Theology ; 
and in this City he continued to reside, employed in the duties of the 
Divinity school, until his death on the 20th of January 1825, in tlic 79th 
vear of his n^e. 

D 



:^tj 



wiiliout, in the slightest degree, abating from the warmth of our 
gratitude and admiration for tlwse fearless champions of Hberty, 
who from the beginning perseveringly asserted our natural rights, 
show some indulgence to those Americans, whose private viitues 
\vere an honor to the land of their nativity, but who, educated iw 
the principles of a monarchical government, abandoned all that 
men hold most dear to what they deemed ihe paramount obligation 
of loyalty. These remarks, however, do not apply to such indi- 
viduals as Tucker J who, after having been Preside; t of the Provin- 
cial congress and done every thing in his power to commit his coun- 
trymen to a contest, in which no middle course could be sought, 
had the baseness to abjure the institutions of his own creation and 
to seek a protection from the British military commanders. With 
Livingston, the question of independence was orjly one of time, 
and though his private opinion on tliat subject might not have coin- 
cided with that of Jay, with whom he was connected by the inti- 
mate lies of family alliance, and of his other bolder associates, he 
yielded to the judgement of his peers. The name of William 
Livingston is not signed to the declaration of independence, as he 
had, before its adoption, left congress for the more active duties of 
tiie military command, with which he had been invested, as one of 
the Generals under the Provincial congress, and on the organization 
of the constitutional legislature, he was chosen Governor of the 
State, an office which, dechning foreign embassies and all other 
public situations, except a seat in the convention that adopted the 
Federal Constitution, he filled during the whole revolutionary wa? 
and indeed till his death in 1790. The administration of Living- 
ston is, in every sense, the tuost important that can ever occur in the 
annals of New-Jersey. For several succes-ive years, the State 
was the battle ground of the revolution. The ordinary meetings 
of the legislature, olFicial forms had to yield to necessity, and, on 
more than one occa.sion, the Governor and council were invested 
with dict,atorial powers. Upon Livingston did Washington fre- 
quently rely to furnish the aids essential to the maintenance of the 
Continental army, but, even during these momentous periods, ll>c 
governor did notcontlne his eflbrts, in behalf of the revolution, to 
the performance of his official acts. The columns of the New- 
Jersey Gazette, which, established in 1777, was throughout the war 
to the Whigs what Rivington's New- York Gazette was to the 
Tories, abounded in hh well written Kssays, addressed to his coun- 
trymen and intended to arouse their patriotism. 



27 

The last legislature under the Royal Governtnent was prorogued 
In December 1775. The necessity of a political organization did 
not afford time for the discussion of abstract propositions, and the 
provincial congress of 1776, which met at Trenton, and in which 
all executive, judicial and legislative powers seemed to be united, 
likewise undertook the new modeUing of the organic law of the 
State, and though only twoda3^s were allowed in which to frame it 
and six to adopt it, and though evidences of haste may be found in 
it, yet it has answered for sixty six years all the purposes of a Con- 
stitution. Of the peculiar provisions of this instrument, it would 
not, of course, become me, even if my limits permitted, to speak ; 
and I only allude to its establishment, as one of the most important 
incidents in the history of the State. 

The active military operations in New- Jersey commenced, on the 
capture of New-York in 1776, and with the exception of two short 
periods, the American grand army was always throughout the war 
within the State or on its borders. There are no few places, within 
the immediate vicinity of the spot, on which we are novv assembled, 
that are marked out either by the encampments of the British or 
American forces, or by the battles or skirmishes of which they 
were the scenes. The retreat of the Americans, through the Jer- 
sey.^, exhibited the strongest evidence of military skill, and it was 
at Trenton and at Princeton, under the Commander-in chief him- 
self, that the cloud which the events at New- York and the surren- 
der of Fort Washington had thrown around the affairs of America 
was dispelled^ while the battle of Monmouth, productive of less im- 
portant results to the general cause, is, on other accounts, among 
the important events of the revolution. Nor was New- Jersey un- 
represented, even in the highest rank of the continental army. — 
William Alexander, the brother-in-law of Governor Livingston, 
who, though his title of Earl of Sterling was never finally estab- 
lished, is known by that distinction in our history, was at the onset 
of the revolution, expelled from his seat in the council of New- Jer- 
sey, under the royal government, for his active participation in the 
proceedings of the rebels. He was taken prisoner on Long Island 
before the fall of Nevv^-York — was afterwards engaged in the re- 
treat through the Jerseys — was at the battles of Trenton and 
Princeton — fought at the Brandy wine and at Germantown and at 
Monmouth, and having every where distinguished himself and en- 
joyed, to an unprecedented extent, the personal confidence and 
friendship of Washington, died at the close of the war. in the 
command of the Northern department of the United States. 



28 

But iL was not only by military services and contributions to tlie 
charges of the war that New-Jersey did her part in pron)oting tbe 
common weal. The names of Stockton, the competitor, at his 
first election, of Livingston for the gubernatorial chair, of Wilher- 
spoon,-^ wiio, regarding the exigency as one setting at nought all 
ordinary rules, did not deem it derogatory to his sacred character 
and the high duties of his literary charge, to contribute his mature 
judgement and varied acquirements to the cause of his adopted 
country, will ever hold a prominent rank among American wor- 
thies, while in the person of Boudinot,| New-Jersey, under the old 
confederation, gave a President to Congress. 

Nor was her part an inactive one in those measures, which put 
the seal; through the Constitution of 1787, to the liberties of the 
Union. In that Convention, not to refer in this connection to hia 
distinguished colleagues, William Patterson, who fust appears in 
the political history of New Jersey, as the Secretary of the Provin- 
cial Congress of 1775, and who after having administered the gov- 
ernment of his State and been a Federal Senator, terminated his 
career in 1806, as one of the members of that more than Amphic- 
tyonic Council, the Supreme Court of the United States, occupied 
a distinguished position ; and to his efforts, as we learn fromMr.Mad- 
ison,:): the smaller states are indebted for the equal representation in 
the Senate. 

The events, subsecjuent to the adoption of the Constitution, are 
too much connected with matters which, even at this day, are ca- 
pable of engendering partisan feelings to admit of their introduction 
into a discourse from which it is intended to discard all discussions, 

*John Witherspoon, who was one of the signers of the Declaration 
of Independence, was a Scotchman by birth and a minister of the es- 
tablished Church of his native country. He was chosen, at the sugges- 
tion of his revolutionary compeer, Stockton, who was then in London, 
in 1760, President of the College of New-Jersey at Princeton ; and, 
while at the head of that institution, was in 1776 elected a member of 
the Provincial Congress of New-Jersey, and die same year a member 
of the Continental Congress, where he served, with the exception of a 
short interval, till 1782. He died in 1794 at the age of 72. 

fElias Boudinoi was President of Congress in 1782 and in that capa- 
city signed the ratifications of the treaty of Peace with Great Britain. 
He died in 1821 in the 82d year of his age, having devoted the last 
years of his life to objects of benevolence and religion. He was the 
first President of the American Bible Society and its most munificent 
patron. 

iMadison's Papers Vol. 2, p. 1048. 



29 

that can call forth any contrariely of sentimeiU among Americans, 
nor do J feel that 1 can, without ihe risk of touching on debateable 
ground, more particularly refer to those worthies, who, since the 
adoption of the constitution, have sustained the reputation of their 
native Stale in the Cabinet of the nation, in the Senate of the 
Union, and on the bench of your own Courts. 

With resspect, however, to your Southard, distinguished in the 
several stations to which I have alluded, and who having attained 
to a place second only to the Ijighest to which an American can as- 
pire, had the good fortune to possess as an eulogist the venerable chief 
of whose administration he had constituted a component part, death 
lias rendered his fame the common heritage of your State; while 
the transfer of one, long his colleague in the most august assembly 
of the Union, from the strifes of political contention to the tranquil- 
ity of an academic life permits a reference to Frelinghuysen who, 
as well as his honored father, illustrated in the public councils a 
name previously consecrated in your ecclesiastical annals.* An al- 
lusion to the judiciary cannot fail to recall to me a venerable and 
distinguished jurist of the last generalion,t most intimately associ- 
ated with all my ren«iniscences of New- Brunswick, liow worthily 
represented in the President of this association ; nor is it a source 
of small gratification for me to recognise, among the members of 
your present supreme tribunal, an individual,:}: who reminds me of 
one of those juvenile friendships, to which 1 have referred in the 
opening of this discourse. 

Nor is New-Jersey, without a special claim to participate in the 
fame, that attaches to some of the most distinguished Statesmen, 
who more peculiarly belong to other sections of the Union. Of 

*The RevM Theodore James** Frelinghuysen came to New-Jersey 
from Holland in 1720 as a minister of the Dutch Church on the Raritan. 
He was an able and successful preacher and a prominent member of 
the Assembly of 1737. Nvhich formed the plan of a csetus, subordinate 
to the Classis of Amsterdam. His five sons all adopted the profession 
of their father. Frederic Frelinghuysen, the grandson of the first emi- 
grant, advantageously known both in the civil and military history of the 
revolution and as a Senator of the U. S. under the present constitution, 
was the father of the Hon. Theodore Frelinghuysen, L. L. D., now 
Chancellor of the University of the City of New- York and from 1829 
to 1835 a Senator in Congress from New- Jersey. 

f Hon. Andrew Kirkpatrick was chief Justice of New-Jersey from 
1797 till his death in 1831. His son Littleton Kirkpatrick, Esq. is 
President of the association before whom this discourse was pronounced. 

4:Hon. James S. Nevius. 



30 

her two CuUeges, one tlntes back as fur as 174G (he oilier to 1770, 
and no few of those, who have slood conspicuous in the national 
Councils, including one who was not less illustrious in the highest 
station, (o which an American can aspire than as an expositor of 
that Constitution lo the establishment of which he essentially con- 
tributed,* hail as iheir Jlima J\Iater one of your Seminaries of 
learning. 

To the present prosperous condition of your own College I have 
alluded, and Witherspoon who, in his appropriate sphere, adorned 
another seat of leiuning, has been referred to in connection with the 
position which he occupied among the statesmen of the revolution ; 
but it becomes us not to forget that to the Seminary over \vhich he 
jiresided, New-Jersey is under obligations of no ordinary character. 
Aaron Hurr is a name, that would have been noted in the annals 
of your State for piety and eloquence, had not the well earned fame 
of the father been obscured by the more conspicuous course of an 
unworthy son, the American Cataline. Jonathan Edwards the suc- 
cessor of Burr established, by enduring proofs, his claims to be reck- 
oned among the first minds not of America alone but of the age in 
which he lived; while, not to refer to more recent incumbents of the 
chair, in Smith, the successor of Witherspoon, we have a contrib- 
utor to American letters, who extended the fame of the institution, 
of which he was for so many years, the president. f Nor 
can I as a New-Yorker and one who as a member of an 
institution for historical research, of which Dr. Miller:|: was a 
founder, have had soiiie opportunity of appreciating his services 
in the elucidation of our annals, fail to regret that, though 

*Jam?3 Madison graduated at Princeton College in 1771. 

•j-The following is a list of the Presidents of the College of Ncw- 
Jorsey which was removed, in 1757, from Newark to Princeton ; Rcv'd 
Jonathan Dickcrson elected in 1746, died in 1747; Rev'd Aaron Burr, 
e\ccU-d 1748, died 1757; Rev'd Jonathan Edwards, elected 1757, died 
1758 ; Rev'd Samuel Davis, from 1759 to 1761 ; Rev'd Samuel Finloy 
from 1761 to 1766 ; the Rc;v'd Jolin Witherspoon, D. D. L. L. D. 
from 1766 to 179 I ; Rcv"d Samuel Stanhope Smith, D. D. L. L. D. 
from 1795 to 1812; Rev'd Ashbel Green, D. D. L. L. D. from 1812 
to 1822 ; Rev'd Jamfs Carnahan, D. D, appointed in 1823. 

JRev'd Samuel Miller, D. D. was the Corresponding Secretary of 
the New-York Historical Society at its organization, and hnd previously 
to his appointment as Professor in the Theological Seminary at Prince- 
ton made collections preparatory to a history of New- York. His pa- 
pers, connected with this matter, arc deposited in the archives of the 

Society. 

« 

3lv77"25l 
Lot-3S 



31 

New- Jersey may enjoy the fame, and (.lie church at h\rge, with 
which he is connecied, may reap the fruits of his laborsj in (rain- 
ing youth for his sacred calling, any circumstances should have 
deprived his native State of (he advaninge, on which she counted, 
of possessing a historian worthy to record her own memorable events. 
I trust that I have done enough to show you that New- Jersey 
possessed in the history of her colonization and subsequent annals^ 
03 well as in the biography of those great and good men, whose 
names are inseparably connected with that of the State, incidents 
worthy of putting in requisition the talents of her most gified gons. 
And perhaps it may be permitted to me to add that the materials of 
liistory are necessarily fleeting. For the doci-mients connected with 
the colonization of the New-Netherlands and their ecclesiastical and 
civil history, you equally with New-York will be benefited by the 
researches nov/ making abroad, at the suggestion of the Historical 
Society, under the auspices and at the expense of the Legislature of 
that State. From the peculiar organization of your first colonial 
government, much ma}'" Iiave been preserved in the records of the 
Proprietaries ; nor, not to enumerate more general collections, are 
the compilations made by Learning and Spicer, the history of New- 
Jersey by Smith, the Journals of the Legislature during the revo- 
lution and the unbroken series of the New-Jersey Gazette for the 
same period, without their value, Mr. Sedgewick has also evin- 
ced considerable research in collecting the documents to illustrate 
the life of his diitinguishcd grand father.* But our system affords 
few facilities for perpetuating family archives, and much, that would 
hereafter be invaluable, is now undoubtedly scattered among the 
papers of individuals and will ere long be irretrievably lost, if some 

means be not found to preserve it, in a place of public deposile. 

Assuredly, if even the inherent interest of the subject was not of 
itself sufficient to induce exertions to wrest frcm oblivion (he ma- 
terials, by which alone the history of your State may be illustrated, 
that debt of gratitude, which tiie people of New- Jersey owe to na- 
tional ancestors, whose origin is not like that of the founders of the 
ancient republics, enveloped in the mysleiies of fable, but whose 
characters are ennobled by all the virtues, which render man esti- 
mable, would impose on those, who are now reaping the rewards of 
their toils, the transmission, unimpaired to future ages, of the me- 
morials, on which are based their claims to be remembered by (he 
remotest posterity. 

*A memoir of the life of William Livingston, by Theodore Sedfre. 
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